‘For last year’s words belong to last year’s language’

‘in the stillness / Between two waves of the sea’ (TS Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’) … waves on the beach at Damai on the South China Sea, near Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
…

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

— TS Eliot, Little Gidding

‘Through the unknown, unremembered gate’ … the gate at a restaurant garden in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

‘Little Gidding’ is the last poem in TS Eliot’s Four Quartets.

Moving from last year’s words and language to the voice of this new year provides most of us with opportunities to reflect on the meaning of time, the past, the present and the future.

I had expected to reflect on some aspects of the past at the Vintage Car Rally in Stony Stratford today. This would have been the 50th anniversary of the rally, but the rains and storms that ushered in with the New Year forced the organisers’ hands, and they decided yesterday to postpone the rally.

Although I have never learned to drive, those rallies have been a reminder of childhood days, with cars from the past that I still associate with family holidays, visits and outings.

Instead, on this New Year’s Day, I found myself being lazy and thoughtful at one and the same time throughout the day, watching old films on television, including Mary Poppins, and pondering on the ways time plays unexpected games with us as we move between one place and the next, from one year to the next.

Although we have suffered very little in these storms so far here in Stony Stratford, I am sure there are heart-breaking reports of floods and losses in many places.

I was reminiscing in very comprehensive ways yesterday on the past year, wondering how I might have responded with more sensitivity, gentleness and generosity to events in the past, and wondering with not a little trepidation what the New Year may yet bring in.

But ‘what might have been … is always present,’ as TS Eliot reminds us in ‘Burnt Norton,’ his first poem in the Four Quartets. Perhaps I shall get back to Ireland, to Crete and to Kuching during the coming year. Without making any New Year resolutions today, I have promised myself more time this year for walks by rivers and the sea, in gardens and in the countryside.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

— TS Eliot, Burnt Norton

‘Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … roses and a gate in the gardens between Darwin House and Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)